Time for a little Friday evening workplace post.
Always Sunny is about to enter is ninth season, and as with any long-running sitcom it has put forth its fair share of hits and misses over the years. I wasn't a huge fan of the show's most recent season, but I just re-watched Season 7 and enjoyed it a great deal the second time around. The show is at its best when it just relentlessly punishes these terrible people without letting off the gas, and several episodes this season were able to keep pushing the situational comedy into increasingly bad situations. Nothing demonstrates this better than two separate scenes from the first two episodes. In the premiere, an ill-concocted Frank-and-Charlie plan is going predictably poorly enough; the pair are trying to land Frank a decent woman, but Frank is creeping her out and Charlie is being an idiot. Most shows would stop digging here, mining the awkward situation for all it's worth, but Sunny immediately kicks things into another gear when Charlie, apropos of nothing at all, emits a fountain of projectile blood vomit all over the poor girl. She's screaming, terrified, sobbing, and the show still refuses to hit the brakes, with Frank just rolling right along and suggesting, through her hysteria, that they go to a bar for some drinks. The entire scene is at once surprising, absurd, and hysterical, but it somehow stays within the confines of plausibility given what we know about these characters and their lifestyles and points of view.
Always Sunny is about to enter is ninth season, and as with any long-running sitcom it has put forth its fair share of hits and misses over the years. I wasn't a huge fan of the show's most recent season, but I just re-watched Season 7 and enjoyed it a great deal the second time around. The show is at its best when it just relentlessly punishes these terrible people without letting off the gas, and several episodes this season were able to keep pushing the situational comedy into increasingly bad situations. Nothing demonstrates this better than two separate scenes from the first two episodes. In the premiere, an ill-concocted Frank-and-Charlie plan is going predictably poorly enough; the pair are trying to land Frank a decent woman, but Frank is creeping her out and Charlie is being an idiot. Most shows would stop digging here, mining the awkward situation for all it's worth, but Sunny immediately kicks things into another gear when Charlie, apropos of nothing at all, emits a fountain of projectile blood vomit all over the poor girl. She's screaming, terrified, sobbing, and the show still refuses to hit the brakes, with Frank just rolling right along and suggesting, through her hysteria, that they go to a bar for some drinks. The entire scene is at once surprising, absurd, and hysterical, but it somehow stays within the confines of plausibility given what we know about these characters and their lifestyles and points of view.
In the second episode, Dee gets her hair braided and starts whipping it around with no shame whatsoever. The joke, obviously, is that this is a terrible hairstyle that no self-respecting adult woman should ever wear. But that's an easy joke. Friends made that exact same joke once, and it ended there. That's only the beginning for Sunny; a scene or two later, Dee and Dennis are on one of those amusement park rides that just drops you a long distance. One of Dee's braids gets stuck in the machinery right before the drop, and we know what's coming, and so do both Dee and Dennis as Dee starts to panic and Dennis starts to laugh, but even still, it's hilarious. Time slows, Dee's cries for help drop a couple of octaves, and we see it, frame by frame, as the drop begins and an entire braid is ripped right out of Dee's scalp, small blood spatters flying in every direction. And once again, out of nowhere, vomit. From Dennis, also in super slow-motion. Here are these idiots, one puking, one screaming in pain, and by the end of the episode they'll have both been involved in some kind of drug murder in a montage set to the Go-Go's "Vacation." Just relentless stuff.
Anyway, now that I've over-explained a pair of vomit jokes, I think it's time to start my weekend. Enjoy yours!
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